"How strange for one man to think he could write the story of another man, a real living man who is perfectly capable of telling his story himself—and then call it autobiography"—Lee Siegel on Dave Eggers' What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng
Introduction
How one speaks can command the attention of a group of friends, a classroom, or even a crowd of thousands. The inflections, pauses, and words delivered in speech have the power to mesmerize, inform, entertain, or reveal. The alternative is also true. Speech can be used carelessly, boring or offending the audience. The term "voice" does not just apply to speech; writers possess voice as well. The strongest writers have a distinctive voice because they consider which word choice, word placement, details, tone, and figurative language would best convey the message they want their readers to understand.
There are people who regardless of their speaking and writing ability are not given a true voice in the world. Their stories are not part of the larger narrative we encounter in school history classes or in literature. They are the voiceless. They are silent. Often writers see these gaps in the "master narrative" that our society accepts as truth and they attempt to fill those gaps by writing for the voiceless, the oppressed. It is refreshing to have stories to read about Native Americans, Hispanics, Africans, African Americans, and women, but many of these stories are not told by the people whose story is being related. For example, one might ask how legitimate Mark Twain's representation of Jim in Huckleberry Finn actually is. Or we could consider whether it is possible for Kathryn Stockett, a white woman, to tell an authentic story about African American maids in the South in her novel The Help. With these ideas in mind, this unit designed for high school seniors will use Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible to examine how writers create voice, how voice creates character, and what the writer and the character are trying to convey through his or her choices in diction, syntax, detail, tone, and sensory language. The students will then examine how these stylistic techniques work together to create the larger meaning of the work as a whole, and how Kingsolver uses stylistic voice to raise larger questions about who is able or permitted to speak for themselves in society.
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